Anonymous Monk,
That question wasn't very specific so my response will be somewhat generic.

First, did you use the IDE to record a session that selects the item from the unordered list? If so, does replaying yield the same results? If not - you should start there.

Second, you say "... trouble verifying data in.." which leads me to believe you are not using the select() method but perhaps the get_select_options() method. It is hard to trouble shoot without knowing which method you are using and how are you using it (example)?

Third, If there is truly some reason WWW::Selenium doesn't have a method you need, you have a number of options. You could use one of the myriad of HTML parsing modules on CPAN and parse it yourself. You could subclass it and fix which ever method is broken.

When putting a smiley right before a closing parenthesis, do you:

Use two parentheses: (Like this: :) )
Use one parenthesis: (Like this: :)
Reverse direction of the smiley: (Like this: (: )
Use angle/square brackets instead of parentheses
Use C-style commenting to set the smiley off from the closing parenthesis
Make the smiley a dunce: (:>
I disapprove of emoticons
Other